Brooklyn Law Review Volume 71 | Issue 4 Article 1 2006 It's Not About the Money: The Role of Preferences, Cognitive Biases, and Heuristics Among Professional Athletes Michael A. McCann Follow this and additional works at: https://brooklynworks.brooklaw.edu/blr Recommended Citation Michael A. McCann, It's Not About the Money: The Role of Preferences, Cognitive Biases, and Heuristics Among Professional Athletes, 71 Brook. L. Rev. (2006). Available at: https://brooklynworks.brooklaw.edu/blr/vol71/iss4/1 This Article is brought to you for free and open access by the Law Journals at BrooklynWorks. It has been accepted for inclusion in Brooklyn Law Review by an authorized editor of BrooklynWorks. ARTICLES It’s Not About the Money: THE ROLE OF PREFERENCES, COGNITIVE BIASES, AND HEURISTICS AMONG PROFESSIONAL ATHLETES Michael A. McCann† I. INTRODUCTION Professional athletes are often regarded as selfish, greedy, and out-of-touch with regular people. They hire agents who are vilified for negotiating employment contracts that occasionally yield compensation in excess of national gross domestic products.1 Professional athletes are thus commonly assumed to most value economic remuneration, rather than the “love of the game” or some other intangible, romanticized inclination. Lending credibility to this intuition is the rational actor model; a law and economic precept which presupposes that when individuals are presented with a set of choices, they rationally weigh costs and benefits, and select the course of † Assistant Professor of Law, Mississippi College School of Law; LL.M., Harvard Law School; J.D., University of Virginia School of Law; B.A., Georgetown University. Prior to becoming a law professor, the author was a Visiting Scholar/Researcher at Harvard Law School and a member of the legal team for former Ohio State football player Maurice Clarett in his lawsuit against the National Football League and its age limit (Clarett v. Nat’l Football League, 369 F.3d 124 (2d Cir. 2004), cert. denied, 125 S. Ct. 1728 (Apr. 4, 2005)). The author wishes to thank Paul Weiler and Stephen Greyser for their insight and inspiration and Russell Korobkin, Jeffrey Rachlinski, Nancy Levit, Donald Langevoort, William Li, and Bryan Stroh for their thoughtful comments on an earlier draft. 1 In the extreme example, consider the ten-year, $252 million contract Alex Rodriguez signed with the Texas Rangers in 2002. $252 million represents eleven times the value of North Korea’s Gross Domestic Product. See John Blanchette, But It’s Baseball That Is the Real Loser in This Absurd Deal, SPOKESMAN REV., Dec. 12, 2000, at C1. 1459 1460 BROOKLYN LAW REVIEW [Vol. 71:4 action that maximizes their wealth, happiness, or satisfaction.2 Since athletes are generally presumed to most value financial compensation, they simply behave “rationally” by selecting the most lucrative offer. Intriguingly, however, for every apparent athletic mercenary, there appear to be many who significantly discount financial compensation. Indeed, for a variety of expressed motivations, professional athletes regularly select the non- optimal contract offer, at least in the traditional sense of optimality. Risk aversion and other deliberative strategies occasionally provide an explanation, but more often, the reason lies in intangibles, such as loyalty, regional affinity, weather preferences, familiarity with certain teammates or coaches, prospects for team success, and demographic traits. A law and economic explanation for such behavior would illuminate the ranking of alternative preferences, and then, as reflected by choice, a maximization of such ranking. Put differently, by accepting a less remunerative offer, professional athletes may consciously substitute subjective value for objective value, and their choice simply reflects that which makes them most happy. Though diagrammatic in many instances, preferences may not universally explain decision-making among professional athletes. Indeed, like all individuals, professional athletes appear vulnerable to cognitive biases, which are subconscious mental errors triggered by simplified informational processes, and heuristics, which are convenient, if unfinished predictive cues. Though cognitive biases and heuristics enable individuals to manage a complex array of stimuli, they often distort preferences and adversely affect decision-making. For instance, because of confirmation bias, individuals are subject to ignore or discount information that challenges existing beliefs. Alternatively, optimism bias leads individuals to assume that general risks do not apply with equal force to themselves. In the context of professional sports, these and other cognitive distortions may impair not only the pursuit of objective value, but also rational assessment of subjective value. This is especially true when teams adroitly manipulate distortions, such as impressing illusory variances among 2 See Peter A. Alces, “If You Don’t Have Anything Good to Say . .,” 15 BANKR. DEV. J. 383, 409, 411-12 (1999) (reviewing KAREN GROSS, FAILURE AND FORGIVENESS: REBALANCING THE BANKRUPTCY SYSTEM (1997)). 2006] PROFESSIONAL ATHLETES 1461 themselves and other teams. Accordingly, when accepting a less remunerative offer, professional athletes may have unknowingly misinterpreted their preferences and rankings. To date, no published analysis has addressed the potential influence of behavioral tendencies on professional athletes in contemplation of contract offers. Perhaps this is not surprising, given the relative paucity of professional athletes among the general population, their presumptively unique modes of employment, and a general aversion among academics to the study of sports. A more scrupulous assessment of professional athletes, however, suggests a uniquely desirable group for examination. Indeed, aside from their striking influence on the world and economy around them, professional athletes, unlike most groups commonly studied by academics, furnish published commentary of their thought processes, typically through newspaper, television, and radio interviews. Accordingly, professional athletes offer a wealth of narration as to their values, beliefs, and priorities, and, equally important, such narration occurs in real world settings, rather than in experimental circumstances. Along those lines, by evading the alleged “experimental flaw” of many behavioral law and economic studies, analysis of decision- making among professional athletes may prove extraordinarily salient in the broader discussion of behavioral sciences and their influence on traditional law and economics. In pursuit of the above phenomena, this Article will begin by exploring the rational actor model and how individuals utilize preferences in determining their optimal choice. This Article will then discuss limitations to the rational actor model, namely the role of cognitive biases and heuristics. Thereafter, this Article will canvass decision-making among professional athletes in contemplation of contract offers. In that regard, this Article will examine why some professional athletes pursue the most lucrative offer, while others do not, and to what extent cognitive biases and heuristics influence their decision-making. This Article will conclude by highlighting implications for professional sports and proposing recommendations for further analysis by economists, psychologists, and legal academics. 1462 BROOKLYN LAW REVIEW [Vol. 71:4 II. EXPLORING THE RATIONAL ACTOR MODEL IN BEHAVIORAL ECONOMICS A. Choice and Utility Among Rational Actors In assessing explanations for why individuals choose one option over another, many theories have emerged. In the context of economic activity, the rational choice theory has received particular praise for its alleged ability to predict human behavior.3 It posits that individuals are selfish actors who seek maximum utility, and when presented with a set of alternatives, select the alternative offering greatest utility.4 Utility may embody objective ends, such as material wealth or tangible property.5 It may also comprise subjective goals, such as happiness or satisfaction.6 Irrespective of its characteristics, utility is thought to demand a set of preferences that encourages a particular behavior, namely the satisfaction of utility-driven preferences in the most efficient manner.7 Put differently, “rationality” consists of pursuing preferences at minimal cost.8 While in search of maximum utility, rational actors are presumed to embody only “selfish” interests.9 Rational choice theorists contend that pursuit of selfish interests promotes cooperation with other persons. Such a contention is partly deduced from the scholarship of Robert Axelrod, who, in The 3 See, e.g., Mark R. Brown, Deterring Bully Government: A Sovereign Dilemma, 76 TUL. L. REV. 149, 160 n.59 (2001); Ronald A. Cass, Economics and International Law, 29 N.Y.U. J. INT’L L. & POL. 473, 509 n.114 (1997); Richard H. Pildes, The Destruction of Social Capital Through Law, 144 U. PA. L. REV. 2055, 2061 (1996). 4 See Alces, supra note 2, at 412. 5 See Alice G. Abreu, Taxes, Power, and Personal Autonomy, 33 SAN DIEGO L. REV. 1, 28 n.64 (1996) (noting that when economists refer to “maximizing utility,” they typically equate utility with material wealth). 6 See Jeanne L. Schroeder, The End of the Market: A Psychoanalysis of Law and Economics, 112 HARV. L. REV. 483, 513 n.103 (describing traditional law and economic metric of utility as a measure of happiness); see also Steven P. Croley & Jon D. Hanson, The Nonpecuniary